Computer Mouse Problems

[Brian556]

First, I had an old trackball mouse. The ball would get dirty and that would cause problems. Then, I got a Logitech laser mouse. The tracking was horrible. Next, I got a Gearhead optical mouse. it tracked very well, but developed twol problems:
1. Clicking on the item that was under the item that I was clicking on-fixed this in Windows settings.
2. It would act as if I released the button when I hadn't. It wouldn't highlight text worth a fudge. it would often mangle the text. On Google maps, it would drop the man prematurly, and do other funky things. Today, I bought a Logitech optical mouse. So far, so good.

[J N Winkler]

With mice I have found you get what you pay for.

I won't ever use a rolling-ball mouse again--it is just too much trouble to clean the compressed lint-and-grease mixture off the rollers.  I also won't ever use a corded mouse (even if it has optical tracking) except as a second mouse (to take with a second laptop on trips) because the cord applies just enough traction to the mouse housing to throw off tracking.

But wireless mice with optical tracking, I have found, have their own issues.  In 2006 I purchased a wireless keyboard/mouse combo and in 2012 finally had to replace the mouse (the keyboard still works fine, apparently because the key design is inherited from the Model M).  I had been having problems with single clicks being interpreted as double clicks, which I eventually decided was because the left mouse button was sticking.  I disassembled the mouse, cleaned it, and discovered that both buttons were one with the plastic housing, while the switch boxes were soldered onto a fiberglass circuit board and could not be replaced without considerable difficulty.  I had stripped all the grease from the inside of the thumbwheel, which ruined scroll feel, and also managed to lose the spring which holds the thumbwheel housing above the switch box, which created many problems with inadvertent scroll clicks.  The mouse was a power hog (no sleep mode or on/off switch), and had red-light laser tracking, which I have come to feel is dangerous to vision even with a contact sensor to cut laser power when the mouse is lifted off the tracking surface.

In the end I purchased a high-end Logitech Anywhere MX mouse as a replacement (for around $50).  It has infrared tracking (which Logitech calls "Darkfield" and claims can work on glass and other smooth glossy surfaces), automatic sleep mode with power switch, and a smooth scrolling mode which is useful for "driving" state DOT photolog imagery at "speeds" several times the legal speed limit.  This mouse is rated for six-month battery life and other, less sophisticated Logitech mice are rated for two years or more.  I think these ratings are optimistic, especially with heavy use and rechargeable batteries, but I have had to replace batteries in my mouse only twice since July 2012--not once every ten days to two weeks as with the old mouse.

As an aside, I don't use mousepads, which I feel are an ergonomic disaster since they tend to degrade tracking rather than improving it and introduce a level difference which limits tracking range.

[Duke87]

Do they even still make mouses with balls? I thought that was like asking for a floppy disk drive.

For a while on my old laptop I got along using just the touchpad... worked well enough for most purposes, but it made playing action games with the "mouse" impossible.

My current laptop's touchpad sucks, so I bought a USB mouse for it. It was optical but corded. After about a year it broke because the cord kinked at the head of the mouse and the wire frayed (I've lost so many pairs of headphones this way, too...). So I went to radio shack and bought a new one. They didn't have any with cords, so my mouse is cordless now. It's a cheap model, but so far so good. It's survived being dropped countless times, even so badly that the cover comes off and the batteries fly out. My only gripe with it is that it won't track properly when run across a textured surface. So whereas with my old mouse I used to run it directly across my couch, my pant leg, or whatever, for my current one I have a piece of cardboard that I'm using as a mouse pad (it has to be something rigid so it doesn't flop around).

[US71]

My dad's (well, now my mom's technically) Mac has a wireless mouse and keyboard.  The mouse batteries give out after a couple months so I have to drive to Missouri to change them (my mom can't get the cover off the mouse). I finally replaced it with a corded mouse. The keyboard will go about 3-4 months without changing batteries. So far, there has been no need for a special trip for that since it has a screw-off cover.

[kphoger]

Has anyone else experienced "pointer drift" (my term) with optical mice?  What I mean is, the mouse is sitting perfectly still on your desk, yet the pointer ever so slowly drifts across your screen.  I had never experienced that problem with roller mice.  But I wholeheartedly agree that keeping the roller mechanism clean is a nightmare with roller mice:  you can clean it, but the frequency with which you have to clean it just keeps going up with time, to the point that you're cleaning it twice a day.

I like corded mice just fine.  As for the weight of the cord pulling it toward the back of the desk, I overcome that (and it doesn't seem to be a universal problem) by either pinning the cord under some PC component or using a small bean-bag-type-thing they make specifically for that purpose.  Now, that does create the opposite problem of sometimes pushing the mouse away from the back of the desk, but it's fairly easily overcome by properly positioning it on the desk.

My desk at work has the following on top of it:  tower, dual monitors, two corded telephones, one dock for a wireless/cell phone, dock for phone headset, keyboard, mouse, lamp, not to mention my notebook and cell phone.  Arranging everything so the cords are long enough to reach where they need to go, while keeping everything arranged logically and within easy reach (and also doable for the next person to sit at my desk), is no easy task.  But I still prefer cords, mainly because I tend to forget to on/off switches when I leave.

[J N Winkler]

Has anyone else experienced "pointer drift" (my term) with optical mice?  What I mean is, the mouse is sitting perfectly still on your desk, yet the pointer ever so slowly drifts across your screen.  I had never experienced that problem with roller mice.

I have experienced pointer drift with both roller and optical mice.  It can result from problems with physical tracking or software.  The roller mice I have used which have had pointer drift have been hooked up to public-use computers, with all that that implies in terms of use and equipment provision, while with my corded second optical mouse, it is a subtle effect of cord tension.  I coil the cord so I can compactly store the mouse (which I basically never use except on long road trips, the last such I took being in September 2012) and once it is unwound, the cord retains enough tension to shift the mouse housing when it is laid on a low-friction surface.

[Scott5114]

I can't stand wireless mice. Having to deal with changing the batteries is annoying, but not as annoying as the mouse's tendency to go to "sleep" to conserve battery power. I've only ever had one wireless mouse, so it could be that it was just a crappy one, but I ended up getting so frustrated at it toward the end of the semester that I ended up smashing it.

I know a lot of people hate mousepads but a good one can really help. The rubber backing, however, cannot be a smooth surface, as that causes it to slide around; you need one with a textured backing. Overly shiny surfaces can sometimes interfere with optical mice (like the countertops at my work place, which are made of some sort of shiny black marble-ish stuff), which a mousepad will alleviate. I also find that using a mouse directly on a desk tends to create too little friction, causing me to overshoot things I'm trying to point at.

I have a Microsoft IntelliPoint mouse from the late 90s that is still chugging along. It is starting to look like crap because the plastic is yellowing and gunk has built up in the spines of the wheel, which seems to be breaking down the rubber. I'm a bit wary of replacing it, though, because the last time I replaced a "good enough" older piece of equipment I ended up getting stuck with a Lexmark printer...

[agentsteel53]

With mice I have found you get what you pay for.

the best mouse I've ever used is a $9 Microsoft example.  I can't remember the product code number, but I did get 36 seconds in minesweeper with it, so it's gotta count for something...

[J N Winkler]

I can't stand wireless mice. Having to deal with changing the batteries is annoying, but not as annoying as the mouse's tendency to go to "sleep" to conserve battery power. I've only ever had one wireless mouse, so it could be that it was just a crappy one, but I ended up getting so frustrated at it toward the end of the semester that I ended up smashing it.

It sounds like a bad model.  My Logitech mouse does go to sleep and I occasionally notice a two-second pause before it wakes up and starts tracking, but this doesn't really inconvenience me since it typically occurs only when I have been away from the computer for at least an hour.

I know a lot of people hate mousepads but a good one can really help. The rubber backing, however, cannot be a smooth surface, as that causes it to slide around; you need one with a textured backing. Overly shiny surfaces can sometimes interfere with optical mice (like the countertops at my work place, which are made of some sort of shiny black marble-ish stuff), which a mousepad will alleviate. I also find that using a mouse directly on a desk tends to create too little friction, causing me to overshoot things I'm trying to point at.

Glossy surfaces are an additional reason, besides protecting your vision, to invest in infrared tracking technology.  It is true that mousepads allow you to get around undesirable friction characteristics, but there is also a comfort benefit to having the mouse range defined by the free space on the desk rather than the edges of a mousepad.  Since my "computer desk" is actually an old fiberboard card table (purchased new in the early 1970's for my parents' bridge games with friends in Topeka) with plastic imitation wood grain as the playing surface, my mouse tracking is close to ideal without a mousepad.

[kphoger]

With mice I have found you get what you pay for.

the best mouse I've ever used is a $9 Microsoft example.  I can't remember the product code number, but I did get 36 seconds in minesweeper with it, so it's gotta count for something...

Minesweeper is unequivocally the standard by which mice should be gauged.

[vdeane]

Laser mice can be funny with certain mouse pads as well.  One year for Christmas I got my Mom a mouse pad that happened to have lots of colors on it.  Lo and behold, moving the mouse sensor from one color to another causes the mouse to jump across the screen.

[DaBigE]

I've been using a Logitech trackball for over 15 years now. It was a sad day when I read Logtiech was stopping production of my beloved corded TrackMan Wheel.   Never had any quality problems, nor did I ever have to load any software to get it to work with anything from Windows 98 thru Windows 7.

My dad got me started, and I've been hooked ever since. With all the CAD work I do, my wrist thanks me greatly. Definitely prefer the corded to the wireless--I prefer to not have to use battery-powered anything if I can avoid it. At work, it helps keep people off my computer, since they hate using it (definitely an acquired taste). Cleaning it weekly does get a tad annoying, but I've gotten used to it. The part I disliked most was how loud the scroll wheel was, until I found a fix for it (took the thing apart, took out the spring for the scroll wheel, put it all back together--walla, smooth scrolling ).

[Scott5114]

I can't stand wireless mice. Having to deal with changing the batteries is annoying, but not as annoying as the mouse's tendency to go to "sleep" to conserve battery power. I've only ever had one wireless mouse, so it could be that it was just a crappy one, but I ended up getting so frustrated at it toward the end of the semester that I ended up smashing it.

It sounds like a bad model.  My Logitech mouse does go to sleep and I occasionally notice a two-second pause before it wakes up and starts tracking, but this doesn't really inconvenience me since it typically occurs only when I have been away from the computer for at least an hour.

Mine went to sleep much more frequently. I'm not really sure if this was configurable at all–as I use Linux as my primary OS, chances are I wouldn't have been able to configure it even if it were, as the bundled software was useless to me. Linux support for any frills to be found on standard hardware (like extra mouse buttons or keyboard buttons that control media players) is pretty much nonexistent, anyway, so I choose to stick with a Model M keyboard and my trusty IntelliPoint mouse.

The only issue I have with the IntelliPoint is that sometimes it scrolls up randomly. It is not frequent enough to be really an annoyance, except for the times when it just so happens to occur when I am holding down Ctrl for some other purpose and it results in unwanted zooming.

I know a lot of people hate mousepads but a good one can really help. The rubber backing, however, cannot be a smooth surface, as that causes it to slide around; you need one with a textured backing. Overly shiny surfaces can sometimes interfere with optical mice (like the countertops at my work place, which are made of some sort of shiny black marble-ish stuff), which a mousepad will alleviate. I also find that using a mouse directly on a desk tends to create too little friction, causing me to overshoot things I'm trying to point at.

Glossy surfaces are an additional reason, besides protecting your vision, to invest in infrared tracking technology.  It is true that mousepads allow you to get around undesirable friction characteristics, but there is also a comfort benefit to having the mouse range defined by the free space on the desk rather than the edges of a mousepad.  Since my "computer desk" is actually an old fiberboard card table (purchased new in the early 1970's for my parents' bridge games with friends in Topeka) with plastic imitation wood grain as the playing surface, my mouse tracking is close to ideal without a mousepad.

All you say is true, but sometimes you cannot control such things. At my work, the computers are basically communal property, so spending personal money to upgrade the mouse would be wasteful, and having the company do it would require getting IT involved, which, as I have no authority to contact them directly, would probably require some sort of endless ascendency through the ranks of management above me, inevitably ending up at the desk of someone who never uses the computer in question (having their own office and computer and not subject to the communal one) and couldn't possibly care how well the mouse performs, and if they did, probably couldn't justify the expense considering the computer is only used by any one person for 15 minutes at the most. Replacing the countertop the computer sits on is also a non-starter, as it is built into the wall and looks to have been rather expensive.

It's easier to just use a mousepad.

I don't find the pad particularly limiting; I developed a tendency to pick up the mouse and move it to the center of the mousing area (whether it is delineated by a pad or not) as a small child, and do it without thinking; this tendency greatly annoyed by best friend when we were eight, as his family eschewed the mousepad, and thus my habitual adjusting of the mouse made a bit of a clunking noise. I am currently using a rather large mousepad, and now that I look at it, it seems to have been intentionally made the in same ratio as a widescreen monitor, so I have never actually run the mouse off the edge of the pad, as my cursor runs out of pixels first.

[Dr Frankenstein]

Definitely prefer the corded to the wireless--I prefer to not have to use battery-powered anything if I can avoid it.

There's hardly any gain in a wireless trackball.